Death row prisoner's case back in Memphis courtroom again

Attorneys for convicted killer Richard Odom, 53, file petition

A psychologist predicted that a 15-year-old Mississippian would remain “a liability to society for the rest of his life.” Two years later, Richard Odom committed his first murder.

The 17-year-old teamed with a friend to beat and stab a 40-year-old and shoot her in the eye.

Decades later, Odom — now age 53 — should still be locked up in a Mississippi prison serving a life sentence for the 1978 murder of Becky Roberts, the manager of a Pearl, Mississippi, drive-in where he had worked part time.

But in September 1990, he was moved from prison to the Simpson County Jail — four hours south of Memphis — and placed in a position of trust as cook. Six months later, he took out the trash and kept on going, hitchhiking to Memphis and making it his hideout and its residents his next victims.

Here, he committed a series of crimes culminating in the 1991 rape and murder of an elderly woman.

Three days later, Memphis police arrested Odom, but some courthouse observers say he appears to have “nine lives.”

His first trial was in 1992, when a Shelby County jury convicted him and sentenced him to die after weighing the Memphis rape and murder along with past crimes, including the Mississippi murder. The state Supreme Court reversed the sentence. A second jury opted for a death sentence in 1999, but that verdict was later reversed. In 2007, a third jury sentenced Odom to die.

Now, a new defense team has filed a post-conviction relief petition, still pending in Shelby County Criminal Court, asking a judge to overturn the sentence and conviction. The attorneys, with the Office of the Post-Conviction Defender, a state agency based in Nashville, claim previous attorneys made several missteps that rendered them ineffective, according to court testimony. They’re also arguing that the state withheld evidence, such as information they say police investigators gathered about alternative suspects.

Memphis police recently turned over all fingerprint evidence gathered at the crime scene. Odom’s team is now reviewing the prints to determine if they need to do more investigating.

Special Judge Don Ash, a senior judge from Murfreesboro, will decide whether to grant a new trial on guilt-innocence or possibly a fourth sentencing trial. He gave the defense a May 29 deadline to decide if they want to put on more proof that a new trial is merited.

These are routine steps in death cases, but what is atypical is how many reversals he has already won — prolonging his fight for a new trial.

Odom’s prior defense attorneys argued that jurors should have considered that Odom was made a killer, not born one, through years of physical and sexual abuse and neglect. They also argued that he was biologically incapable of controlling his impulses and rage due to low serotonin, an inhibitory brain chemical.

His new defense team is arguing that his previous attorneys should have explored those mitigating factors further and that it’s possible he didn’t actually commit the Memphis murder, according to court testimony.

The murder at issue is the May 10, 1991, rape and stabbing of Mina Ethel Johnson, 77. She had left her sister’s house that afternoon and headed to Midtown for an appointment with her podiatrist. The doctor later found her body in the back seat of her car in a Medical Center area parking garage, at Madison and Pauline.

Prosecutors say a fingerprint left on a seat belt buckle in the back seat of her car matched Odom’s print, which police had on file due to his arrest a month earlier on charges of fraudulently using a credit card, court records show.

Odom’s new attorneys say they haven’t been able to examine the print — tantamount to a smoking gun — because they claim it was among records, in the possession of the Tennessee Supreme Court, destroyed years ago during extensive flooding in Nashville.

Prosecutors argued that evidence had been examined by his prior attorneys during his first three trials.

They also pointed to Odom’s confession to police and incriminating statements made to others, including one captured on video.

In a recorded interview soon after his arrest in 1991, he told a TV news reporter that he didn’t remember raping or killing the victim, but he remembered pulling his pants up and getting out of her car.

Odom told his initial attorneys that he was homeless and hungry and sleeping in the parking garage when he saw the victim, who was a stranger, pull in. He said he approached with plans to snatch her purse. He claimed they somehow fell in the car but that he didn’t remember the rape or murder.

However, he told police that when the victim called him “son,” he replied, “I’ll give you a son,” and raped her while stabbing her in the chest. The blade penetrated her heart, lung and liver.

He rifled through her purse, just taking her car keys, which he later tossed out.

When police arrested Odom, he had a large and open lock-blade knife, court records show.

The judge deciding whether to grant Odom a new trial hasn’t yet set a deadline for final arguments from the defense and prosecution before he makes his ruling.